Chapter Text
Ice cold air flooded back into her lungs, and the handprint on her throat burned like fire. For the first time in hours, the world around her was quiet, and every muscle and bone, her head, even her breath ached with the weight of the battle she’d fought.
The battle she’d won.
She had looked Death in his ice blue eyes and had told him not today. She had killed the unkillable, the thing that raised the dead.
Rising to her feet, she saw Bran smiling at her, and she smirked and gave him her best curtsy, just like she had whenever she outshot him when they were small.
“I told you that knife was wasted on me,” he stated. In another life, he might have been teasing her, but there was still something hollow in his voice. Still, there was a hint of Bran-ness to the words. If she could kill Death, maybe her little brother would someday be a person again. Neither of them would be No One.
“Good thing one of us knew how to use it.” Her voice came out as a rasp, the words feeling like they were cutting her throat from the inside. Gingerly, she laid a hand on her neck, and wound up wincing and coughing.
From outside the godswood, she could hear the survivors of the battle, sound coming back after the shock of victory wore off. There were cries of joy, screams of pain and grief, and loved ones calling each other’s names. It was then that she heard her own.
“ARYA! BRAN! SANSA!” Jon’s voice rang through the crowd, growing louder as he surged towards the godswood. Arya realized he was probably on his way when she’d killed the Night King.
She’d killed the Night King.
“ARYA! BRAN-” Jon’s voice was closer than ever, and she turned to face him, her Valyrian steel dagger still clutched in her fist.
Her brother stood at the entrance of the godswood, staring at his two younger siblings in shock before running to them. He grabbed Arya and spun her around, then ruffled Bran’s hair before embracing him as best he could around the chair. Bran looked somewhat bemused by the whole affair.
Jon pulled back, a hand on each sibling’s shoulder. “How did we win? What happened?” He looked around, searching for someone. “Where’s-”
“Theon Greyjoy was killed by the Night King while protecting me.” Bran answered the question before it could be asked.
“Then, did he-”
“No,” Bran cut Jon off again. “ She did.”
Both brothers turned to look at Arya, and Jon had a look of sheer wonder in his eyes.
Arya lifted up her dagger to show Jon. “I stuck him with the pointy end,” she managed in a hoarse whisper.
Suddenly laughter filled the godswood, and for a second Arya was a child again, in a Winterfell not surrounded by fire and blood, and if she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine the laughter was her father’s. Jon sounded just like him sometimes.
“I always knew you’d be a warrior,” he told her softly, the laughter fading. “Father would be proud.”
And then she was crying like that little girl from so long ago. Her face was coated in blood and her throat was raw and her head throbbed and every muscle in her body ached and she was just so tired .
Jon wrapped her in his arms again and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “It’s alright now, Arya,” he whispered. “We won. You saved us all.”
He pulled back and gave her a more critical look, taking in the gash on her forehead and the handprint on her throat. “Now let’s get you to a maester.” He turned to Bran, who was still seated serenely by the weirwood tree, his hair still a mess from Jon’s ruffling. “And let’s get you inside, out of the cold.”
“That’s alright,” Bran replied. “I got to see the sun rise.”
Jon and Arya looked up, and sure enough, dawn had broken. The night had ended.
Suddenly, worry took over Jon again. “Wait, Sansa-“
“She’s in the crypt,” Arya answered. “I gave her one of my dragonglass daggers.”
“But the Night King started raising our dead, the crypt-“
“She’s fine,” Bran cut Jon off. “The dead fell just as she was about to fight them to protect the children down there.”
Sansa was about to fight? Arya could hardly believe it. Maybe the world really had ended.
The three of them began to make their way out of the godswood, Jon pushing Bran and Arya limping alongside after she threatened to stab Jon too after he suggested she should sit on top of Bran and so he could push both of them at once.
Stepping out into the courtyard, Arya finally took in just how many corpses were strewn about. She found herself searching their faces, hoping against hope she wouldn’t see anyone familiar among them.
Hoping she wouldn’t see him among them.
She did see little Lyanna Mormont beside the corpse of a giant. Arya had barely known the girl, but in her she’d seen a younger version of herself, or what she’d wished she could’ve been at that age. For one so small and so strong to die so young- Death was familiar to Arya, but not painless.
“She died slaying that giant.” Arya turned and saw the red-haired wildling, Tormund. Jon spoke kindly of him.
“She was stronger than any of us. A Bear through and through. Her mother Maege would be proud.” Arya hadn’t known the elder Lady of Bear Island, but she’d heard stories of how she fought beside Robb.
“What did you say her mother’s name was?” Tormund sounded shocked, but Arya had no idea why.
“Maege Mormont, of Bear Island,” she answered.
“Maege the She-Bear.” Tormund whispered. “She was a fucking Mormont, I should’ve known. And the girl-“ he looked down at Lyanna’s still form. “How old was she?”
“Lady Lyanna was three-and-ten, if I recall correctly.” Arya had no idea what in seven hells was going on here.
“That means, that means…” Tormund turned to Jon. “Remember how I told you about the time I fucked a bear?”
“What the fu-“ Arya began, but Tormund continued.
“That was her mother. Maege the She-Bear. And her age-“ his voice broke.
“No one ever knew who fathered Maege’s daughters,” Jon said carefully. “She never said. Only insisted they weren’t bastards. They were Mormonts, same as her, same as her father before her.”
“I took her the way of the free folk. She was my wife, according to our ways. She’d disappear, but she’d come back. Then she stopped coming back. Her girls- they were mine, then.” He looked down at Lyanna, tears filling his blue eyes. “My daughter, the giant-slayer. I should have known. I should have known.”
He fell to his knees beside his newly-found and newly-lost child, and he wept. She and Jon exchanged a look, unsure what to do.
“My daughter died in my arms.” Arya and Jon looked to see Jaime Lannister standing behind Tormund, his remaining hand hovering above the wildling’s shoulder.
“Most of her life, she didn’t know I was her father, and I couldn’t tell her,” Jaime continued, either unaware or uncaring of the trio of Starks that were staring at him. “But just before she died, she told me she knew I was her father, and that she loved me.” His eyes were closed, and now both men were weeping. Finally, Jaime laid his hand on Tormund’s shoulder. “It doesn’t get easier. It just gets further away.”
Finally, Jaime looked up at the Starks, but he simply nodded to Jon, as if to tell him he’d handle this, that they could go, that he would take care of his fellow warrior.
As the trio began walking away, Arya once more heard her name through the wails of the wounded.
“ARYA! ARYA, WHERE ARE YOU? ARYA!”
She whirled around, and there he was, not halfway across the courtyard from her, alive and only slightly bloody and looking at his surroundings like he was ready to dig through each pile of corpses to find her, if he had to.
“GENDRY!” She shouted, not caring about her damned throat, and suddenly she was racing across the courtyard to him, injuries be damned.
He turned to her voice, and made it all of three steps towards her before she reached him and threw her arms around his neck, and after taking a second to catch his balance, he threw his arms around her waist and lifted her in the air.
“You’re alive, you’re alive,” he muttered to himself.
“I’m pretty hard to kill,” she retorted.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and leaned back to look in his eyes. Blue eyes. Not the ice cold blue of the dead, but the warm blue of the summer sky. Gently, she cupped his face in her hands, and kissed him then and there, and he kissed her back, neither of them caring where they were or what was happening around them. They had fought so hard to survive, and now they’d live.
“WHAT THE FUCK?!”